The Sadness Passes

I am getting another visit from Home Care today. This is not a care visit, but another assessment visit. The first was a general health assessment. The second was an assessment by the physiotherapist. This one is some sort of care planning assessment. My hope is that this visit will actually result in home care helping me now and again.

There is a lot of focus these days on my physical well being. This is a good thing, as this is the most obvious area of decline and one that most definitely affects my quality of life. On the other hand, I need to consider my mental well being too, not something most agencies can do much about. The emotional challenges of this disease are as tough as the physical ones, perhaps even more difficult in that there are no obvious aids to make them easier to handle. Medications can make a difference but that means a chemical filled life, something I want to avoid if at all possible. I want my mind to be my own mind, for as long as possible.

Lately I have taken to a lot more "contemplation", a lot more time where I just sit and think, allowing my mind to roam freely, to pick its own targets and to wonder about the immensity of the changes in my life over the last 24 months. About two years ago this month I began to have real issues with walking, sitting and standing. It was sufficiently noticeable that many commented on it. At that time I thought it was an issue with my back; never did I think of ALS, not even a little.

The changes from there came quickly, with the purchase of a cane, visits to doctors, these resulting ultimately in diagnosis. Then came the wheelchair, the ever increasing loss of mobility, and now the renovations. These days I will often find myself lost in reverie, contemplating some facet of my life, seemingly adrift as my emotional and intellectual self grapple with what has happened, what is happening, what will happen. I look in my new bathroom in dullness, staring not at it, but past it, wondering at the changes which have come. I sit and look out my window, adrift in the perigrinations of pondering, not hearing the birds that sing or the hum of traffic.

These wanderings leave me saddened. I think, "What the hell has happened to my life?" I wonder, "What will happen to me next?" I drift along in these thoughts, growing ever more indolent until I awake from my intellectual slumber, realizing that life is what it is, and I am what I am. Then I move on, carrying the sadness like a backpack, working to unload it as I go, lightening my emotional burden. The sadness passes, life goes on.